Lunch (4 page)

“I was home with the flu,” Annette is saying, “and I was in a terrible dither because an important buyer had said he might be coming by, but he was in transit and therefore unreachable, and my secretary was on holiday, and I quite didn't know what to do.”

“So you called Olivia,” Nick says.

“Yes. It was the last week of her show, actually, and she knew the art, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Nick agrees, filling her glass.

“So, after I begged and pleaded and promised her the moon she came round for the keys.”

Nick is calm, listening, his eyes never leaving her. I stare at the bubbles in my champagne, cream-­colored effervescence, until my eyes blur, unfocused, and the room dissolves to nothing save Annette's voice, softly speaking, I can see the gallery she is describing, the calm white interior, I see Olivia behind the desk, reading, the only noise the slap of rain on the window, the smooth moan of the wind. I imagine her lost in a book, her paintings on the walls, the discomforting presence of being surrounded by portraits that had once occupied her so violently yet now have passed on to their owners, and no longer have any hold on her life save a vague disbelief that she created them.

She is sitting there, reading, when she hears the door open and the snap of an umbrella shutting, and she barely looks up when a man says
Bonjour
because she has completely forgotten he might be an important buyer, and so all she says is Let me know if I can help you.

He wanders around, this stranger, his presence negligible until she hears a great jolt of laughter, the kind of infectious laugh that makes you smile through any tears, and she cannot understand what could have amused him so, because they were her paintings, and she did not think they were funny.

She gets up, annoyed, and moves over to join him. He is tall and thin, with wavy dark hair that needs cutting, staring with eyes the color of her Siberian amber beads at her favorite of all in the show, the naughty one, a portrait of the cello player Antonio del Campo, painted in the setting of
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe,
naked on a blanket in the forest, with a string quartet serenading him in the background, the quartet he often played with. Poor Antonio, she is thinking, such a bastard and yet at this moment so maligned, so naked, hanging on a wall, an object of humorous derision for a man who has walked in out of the rain.

“So this is the famous portrait,” he says, his English heavily accented. “Forgive me for laughing, but I know Antonio, and she's captured him perfectly, that arrogant smile.
Quelle gueule!
May I ask, do you know, what did he do when he saw it for the first time?”

“I heard he was stunned into what, I was told, was for him an uncharacteristic silence. The shock of the truth, I guess, when it dents the fragile eggshell of someone's ego, can be a bit frightening. Seeing yourself exposed like that, I mean.”

“She's a great talent, don't you think?”

He turns to her, thinking she is the receptionist, and his eyes are shining, like a tortoiseshell comb catching the light even as it lies hidden in the thick bun of a woman's hair, and when she sees him full in the face she decides, a surprising quick decision rare in its clarity and strength, that if she could she'd like to paint him, whoever he is, she will somehow contrive to paint him as a cougar, sleek, rain-­wet, prowling, an elegant dark shadow, in the corridors of a palace. Versailles, perhaps, or Vaux-­le-­Vicomte.

“Do you know,” he says, as if reading her thoughts, “but, of course you must know, how does she arrange her commissions? Do you think I might be able to ask her to paint my portrait?” He flushes. “It is not only that I admire her work, but it is a sort of—­”

“Sort of what?”

He bites his lip. “Rivalry.” He looks at her quickly, then away, embarrassed. “It is quite silly. We often worked together,” he explains, his gaze back on the portrait. “The first violin used to be my wife.”

“I see,” she says, “but that's still not a very good reason to sit for a portrait. Rivalry, I mean. It's an important decision, not to be taken lightly, and Olivia is quite fussy.”

“And that was a very stupid thing to say.
Vous avez raison.
But, you know, the truth is . . .” He runs his hands through his hair, as she does to her own. “The truth is I live in terror of losing my hands, although that fear is probably quite ridiculous, and I'd like to be painted while I am at this, how do you say . . . this place.” He flushes again.
“Excusez-­moi,”
he says. “All I seem to do is apologize for the idiotic things I am saying.
Je m'exprime beaucoup mieux en français.
But these paintings, they are so open, their
caractère,
they make you want to drop your guard and be painted as she sees you, not as you see yourself.”

There is a glimmer, only a flick, in his eyes that she suddenly wants desperately to capture, to reanimate in her studio, illuminate on canvas, and in doing so make that illusion be real, immortalized.

He catches her stare. “I'm sorry, but you look familiar,” she says, her turn to blush even though she knows perfectly well who he is.

“Olivier de Chabrol. I am very pleased to meet you.”

“Of course,” she says. “The pianist.” Before he can ask her name she tells him the particular ­demands of the artist, the capricious selection of her subjects, the lunchtime sittings in the pose of her choosing, the numbing curiosity unsatisfied by her curt refusal to show any work in progress, her penchant for settings and highly stylized backgrounds among the oddities of mythology and folktales, complete payment in advance, unrefundable and irredeemable.

“I understand,” he says. “I am leaving quite soon for a tour in America for several months. Do you think I might meet her before I go?”

“I can put in a word for you, seeing that you liked poor Antonio so much. She was very pleased with that one. Let me have your number, and if she wants to, she'll call you to arrange a meeting.”

“I'm at Brown's, only until Sunday. Will you try?”

“I'll do my best. This is her gallery, after all.”

“Could she meet for tea, or a drink?”

“Lunch. She prefers to meet potential clients at lunch. There've been many arguments about this, I must say, but she claims the sittings must take place then because the light is best, even when it's not, and that's when she wants to see ­people, to talk and make her decision.” She smiles, secretly a bit aghast at her audacious description of her own stubborn temperament.

“La dame des règles,”
he says. “I like that. It is much the same for me. I can play even if the light is extinguished, but still there always are rules.”

He sighs, and she nearly sees that flickering look again, although she doesn't need to, because she has already decided.

“Please,” he says, “I know my asking is very spontaneous, but I would like this very much to be arranged.”

“I understand.”

She goes back to the desk and hands him one of Annette's cards. He pockets it, still assuming she is the receptionist, or Annette.

“You may ring me at any time,” he says, shaking her hand, his fingers fine and strong.

It has stopped raining, and he forgets his umbrella.

That night she conjures his portrait, conceives it as a living vision, he moving through it, prowling down the corridors of a palace already so deep in her head that she dreams it finished, seeing his face smiling at her in her sleep.

She had told Annette everything, and Annette makes her call him the next day to put him out of his misery, he disbelieving and grateful.

“Lunch,” she says. “Friday.”

“How will I know her?” he wonders.

“Don't worry, she knows what you look like,” she says, trying not to laugh. “She is a bit of a fan.”

His thanks are effusive, embarrassing, and she feels a naughty pang of conscience, for only a moment.

At lunch he is waiting, sitting stiff and anxious, clearly expecting to be disappointed, the fingers of his right hand trilling a nervous sonata between the fork and the spoon.

When he sees Olivia, carrying his umbrella, his face falls. It is only the woman from the gallery, come to tell him, no doubt, the regretful news that the artist had changed her mind.

“She doesn't want me,” he says when she sits down.

“Yes, she does.”

“But she has sent you in her place.”

“No, she hasn't.”

“But—­”

Olivia smiles. “Please, forgive me,” she says. “I didn't mean to do that to you. It was terribly rude.”

He forgives her, of course, he will forgive her anything, and they sit, eating, picking at their food because they are not hungry, they are too busy talking, both sending a silent prayer of thanks to Annette for having the flu, curious, their eyes shining, his a beacon of pleasure when she gives him the number of her studio, the number only a handful have, but he does not yet know that, talking about everything and nothing, wary and delirious, wondering and not caring why, there is always time to wonder why.

They leave, sharing a taxi to drop him at Brown's.

“Call me,” she says when they turn near the hotel. “Call me as soon as the tour's over.”

“I will call you before then,” he says, “and I wish it were already over.”

“It's better to wait.”

“Not always.”

They are staring at each other, flushed, it is time to go, and they don't understand, they want this moment to linger, it is enchanted. He leans over to kiss her cheek, one, then the other, and then his lips slide to her mouth and he kisses her, hard, with all the passion locked in his soul, and they both pull back as if shocked, their hearts not beating, looking at each other in blank astonishment, and then he gets out and stands watching her as she turns around to wave farewell.

She counts the days till he gets back.

“T
HAT IS
a story,” Nick says. “Very romantic. Except that they are rarely together. How long has it been this time?”

Annette shrugs. “Nearly two months, I should think. But they manage. Olivia goes to see him whenever she can, but she's quite in demand as well. They've entirely overloaded their schedules so they can take a long honeymoon, whenever that is, and it's making me quite cross, actually, that she's working so hard. Olivia's insisting on a long cruise, no telephones, no fax machines, no ­people, no distractions, but it will probably be a year before they can take it, knowing them.”

Nick smiles. That is all he needs to know. The longer they've been apart, the better. “Thank you for telling me,” he says, absolutely sincere, for him an uncommon occurrence. “She is very lucky to have you.”

“I'm lucky to be here.”

He picks up her hand, and kisses it. “So am I.”

Annette would happily do anything he said, if he said it to her then, with the heat of his lips on her flesh, but he has no need to, has never any wish to, because he looks up and Olivia is standing at his shoulder.

There is a sudden rush, an electric jolt, and she is cursing herself, furious at the deep twinge of proprietorial annoyance when she saw Nick leaning so close to Annette. I should never have come, she silently, vehemently berates herself, this is so ridiculous that I am jealous, he makes me cringe, his smug surety and his big blue eyes, he is such a bastard to women, I know he is, I can feel it, he fucks them and then he fucks them over, why couldn't I stay away?

She is as peculiar-­looking as I remembered. A casting director would see her face and, at best, say nice hair but nothing memorable, her features small and even, save for her eyes, her mouth not wide and pouting, her cheekbones too round, yet she possessed an extraordinary quality of animation felt only when she fixed her queer eyes upon you, pondering, alight, the color ever shifting, eyes like the sky before a storm, the same frothy hues of the sea when it was whipped into angry waves during the hurricane that trashed our beach house in Malibu.

Her hair does not match her coloring, does not belong to the pale splendor of skin that should have been littered with freckles, does not complement the somber pewter of her eyes, it is too darkly red, gleaming chestnut and mahogany and as much like leaves burning crisp in their last indelible glory, and so much of it, long, halfway down her back, a curling mass begging to be brushed, brushed as Olivier, who buries his head in it and begs her not to cut it every time she pushes it off her shoulders in annoyance, brushes it in the evenings. Her hair should have been dark blond, like newmown hay, or dark, blue-­black as ink, to set off that peculiar lightness of her eyes, like ice cubes melting, almost reptilianly opaque when she is stern or flummoxed, as she is now, because she has tried to tell herself she does not want to be anywhere near Nick, and yet here she is.

She sits down after kissing Annette hello, somber, and we order. Nick has gauged her mood instantly, fearing as much as his ego will let him that any forcefulness might drive her away, and changes the subject, regaling us with stories I'd overheard and told him about the wardrobe mistress and the extras in period costume, wandering ghostlike in the artificial moonlight down the cobblestoned streets of Shoreditch, where they have just started to shoot, appearing to float in and out of banks of fog carefully blown in by grips manning the giant-­size fans.

Olivia pushes her food around her plate, listening to them talk, distracted. I see her perplexity. She cannot help but wonder why he, who could have anyone he wanted throwing herself at his feet, has chosen her. It doesn't make sense, and she wants to understand it, why she has allowed herself to be so stunned by the relentless strength of Nick's libidinous charisma.

She underestimates it. Nick is the riptide of sex. You're sucked under before you've got a chance to think, and when again you surface you've been pulled far out to sea, bobbing and adrift.